


Ident

by Shorm (Bdoing), Vinnocent



Series: Humanity Is Watching [4]
Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate, Firefly
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Domestic Violence, Mind/Mood Altering Substances, Multi, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-13
Updated: 2014-10-14
Packaged: 2018-02-20 23:10:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2446541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bdoing/pseuds/Shorm, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vinnocent/pseuds/Vinnocent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Tom is triggered into another attack, Jake and Rachel fall ill. However, while Jake is content to sleep it off, Rachel is out for blood. Unable to make their job, Marco makes ends meet by approaching an old ally.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“I navigate with that!” Tobias objected loudly.

“You navigate with it wrongly,” Alex－ Aximili countered.

“I have out-flown innumerable patrol boats! I’ve swung around stars and navigated my way _through_ gas giants. With. This. System!” Tobias snarled.

“ _Wrongly_ ,” Ax countered.

At that, the bridge airlock behind them rumbled open, revealing a thoroughly annoyed Jake. “Do I have to separate you two?” he demanded. “I can hear you with the airlock closed!”

Tobias quirked an eyebrow at him. “Are you kidding?” he demanded. “We’re making amazing progress on this piece of shit.” He tapped the control board to emphasize his point.

Jake wanted to argue. He really did. Unfortunately, he had no idea what he was arguing. “Just… less loud,” he floundered, shaking his head and heading back into the galley, where Marco was emerging from the shuttle bay.

“Oh, hey,” he greeted. “Got an ETA yet?”

“We’ll be in Misery Bay in about four days,” Jake said.

“Oh, Misery Bay?” Marco laughed. “Right, I’m sure I’ll be able to find _plenty_ of clientele in _Misery Bay_.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Jake said, rolling his eyes. “We’ll drop you off on the planet before heading to the moon. It’s a little extra fuel to do that, though, so…”

“Are you asking me for money?” Marco demanded. “Really? After how much I dumped into the whole Tom thing?”

“And I am _so_ very… kind of grateful for that,” Jake said, grimacing. He rubbed at his nose nervously. “But uh… Thing is… If we don’t refill about… _sixty_ more fuel cells on landing, then we’ll be on fumes before the job’s even over.”

“Won’t Cassie and Tobias let you be late on the paychecks?” Marco asked.

Jake rubbed his nose again and glanced aside. “I, uh… I already am,” he admitted.

Marco rolled his eyes and turned to head back to his shuttle. “I’ll see what I can do, but it means I pick the next location.”

“Sure,” Jake agreed. “So long as it doesn’t touch Core.”

Marco spun back toward him. “Jake, I am a _business_ , not a charity!”

“And that business is currently flirting with some extreme illegality,” Jake said, gesturing in the general direction of the infirmary. “Look, it’s not forever. We’ll go back to our regular routes when the Alliance is off our back.”

Marco snorted bitterly. “When the Alliance is off our back,” he repeated. “So any day now, then?”

“You really wanna go to the core?” Jake challenged.

Marco deflated slightly, shaking his head. “I’m just frustrated, man,” he said, spreading his hands.

“We all are,” said Jake. “We’ll make it work. We always do.”

Marco nodded. “Yeah, sure.” He started back to his shuttle again. “I’ll see what I can dig out of my accounts. It may work better for either me or Fox to take an extra job,” he said.

Jake frowned. “Don’t bring Fox in if we don’t need ’em,” he warned. “The last thing we need is to give the Alliance _more_ ammunition.”

Marco nodded again and waved a hand dismissively before disappearing through the shuttle bay airlock. Jake sighed and headed down toward the infirmary. He was surprised to see Rachel depositing her guns in the barrel at the other side of the door. “I didn’t know you ever checked on him,” Jake said, removing his gun belt and dropping it into the barrel on his side.

“I’m here for aspirin,” she grunted, crossing her arms defensively.

Jake rolled his eyes. “Okay, sure,” he said. Glaring at him, Rachel pushed her way into the infirmary, heading toward the far cabinets.

Entering after her, Jake stopped in his tracks, realizing immediately what was missing from the scene: Tom. “Rachel!” he hissed, and she turned, curiously. Then, her eyes widened, and she reached for a gun that wasn’t there. That was when he felt the all too familiar feeling of a pistol barrel pushing at the back of his head.

Slowly, Jake put up his hands and turned around to face his brother. Tom was breathing heavily and sweating, holding himself up against the wall. His gun hand was trembling slightly, but not enough to give Jake any confidence in an advantage. “Tom…” Jake whispered as Rachel eased toward the door, but Tom simply swung out his left hand, revealing a second gun, and Rachel decided to stay where she was. “Tom, please…”

Tom stared at him stonily and opened his mouth. He swallowed a couple deep breaths, then said “I…”

Jake and Rachel exchanged quick glances of panic and confusion. “Tom?” she asked.

“I… Ident…” he pushed out, wincing as though it hurt to dig the words out. “I… dent.”

Jake raised an eyebrow. “Are you asking for my ident card?” he asked.

“God, we’re being held at gunpoint by a broken brain,” Rachel whined, and Jake glared at her.

Tom’s head thudded back against the wall, and he blinked rapidly, appearing dizzy and confused. Ignoring that he was holding Jake at gunpoint, he started to press his right hand to his temple. Jake immediately moved forward to capture the gun, but Tom was faster. He aimed and shot.

A bottle behind Jake exploded in shards of glass, spilling liquid across the counter, and he jumped. At first, he thought that Tom had missed, but then Tom aimed again and shot the bottle next to it, immediately ducking out of the infirmary and pressing the exterior lock.

“Hey!” Rachel cried, running forward and slamming against the doors. It was no use. The exterior lock was a safety lock. They couldn’t leave until someone turned it off.

“Rachel,” Jake gasped, sinking to his knees. She turned to see that the two liquids had mixed and reacted, quickly filling the room with a cloudy gas. She ran to the exhaust fan but found that Tom had torn the controls out. “Well… shit.”

And then she, too, fell to the floor.

－ －

“I think that… is she usually glittery?”

“She inks her battle wounds.”

“... Ah.”

Sleepily, Rachel swatted at whoever the hell had the gall to be touching her. “Geddoffit,” she mumbled, trying to turn over in her bed, which resulted in a lot of shouting and many more hands on her, which was the opposite of what she'd wanted. “No no no!” she protested weakly.

“Rachel? Rachel, honey, I need you to wake up, okay?” Cassie’s voice. Someone was squeezing her hand, and immediately Rachel knew it was Tobias.

“Did somebody shoot me?” she slurred, trying to pry her eyes open.

“Not, quite,” said Tobias. “You’ve been drugged.”

“Booooo.”

“Urgngm,” someone mumbled to her far left. Jake, maybe? Rachel blinked up at the bright lights blearily, then turned to face the noise. Despite her vision still being fairly blurry, she could tell that Jake was trying to sit up on the other examination table, but Cassie and Marco had immediately rushed over to hold him down and talk to him. She was distracted from the view when Erek shone a penlight in her eyes. Groaning, she swatted at him until he left her again.

“I do think they’re recovering, but we can probably expect side effects for at least a day,” said Erek. “They should be returned to their rooms as soon as possible.”

“What side effects?” asked Marco.

“Uh… I have no idea,” Erek answered, wringing his hands.

“No one ever let me drink Rachel’s moonshine ever again,” Jake moaned, sitting up only enough to tuck his head between his legs.

Tobias rolled his eyes. “You were drugged,” he repeated.

“Is that not what I just said?”

“Hold on, what do you mean you don’t know?” Marco demanded.

Erek gestured to a screen on the wall. “Well, I know what the chemicals were. And I know what gas would be produced by mixing them. But… That shouldn’t have the effects I’m reading on Jake and Rachel. It should only be mild headaches, maybe some hallucinations if they’re given to that sort of thing.” He made a helpless motion. “It seems to be interacting with something else already in their system, but I’m having trouble isolating it.”

Cassie shook her head in disbelief. “Are you saying he poisoned them _twice_?” she demanded.

“No,” Jake murmured, shaking his head. “No no no.”

Erek was immediately at his side, one hand pinching his wrist and the other pressed against his chest. “Jake, do you remember what happened?” Erek asked.

“I… uh…” Jake floundered. “There was…” He raised his free hand to rub at his aching head.

“Do you remember being on the bridge with us?” Tobias asked.

Jake snapped his fingers and nodded. “Yes!” he exclaimed. “You and, uh, Acsimile… Askmil… _Ax_ were arguing. I… I made you not be loud,” he slurred. “Then, I went to the infirmary… and… Rachel” He pointed at Rachel as though they wouldn’t immediately understand who that was, and Cassie clamped a hand over her mouth to keep from laughing. “Rachel was there. She, uh, she went in first. Then we saw Tom wasn’t there. Shoulda been. Behind me.” Jake gestured to the back of his head. “Had gun. One for her, too. Didn’t shoot us. Shot the…” Jake gestured to the counter where the chemicals had been. “The… things. Locked us in. They, uh, they made smoke.” He shook his head and rubbed his temples. “Don’t remember after that.”

“Where’s Tom?” Rachel asked, and Erek moved over to her to pinch her wrist. When he went to put a hand against her chest, however, she shoved him away.

“I need to measure your breaths,” he told her.

“I assure you that I’m breathing,” she growled. “Now, where is Tom?”

“I subdued him,” Marco said. “We drugged him, locked him in a room, and Aximili’s watching him now.”

“’Kay,” said Jake, laying back down on the exam table.

Cassie raised an eyebrow at that while Marco glowered. “Honey, you okay?” she asked.

“Shiny,” he mumbled.

“It’s not enough,” Rachel insisted. “This was premeditated. He’s obviously a lot more aware than we thought. He’s not _only_ a set of triggers. He, himself, is against us.”

Marco rolled his eyes. “Rach, we put him in the room that _you_ modified to hold him,” he said.

“Before this happened!” she insisted.

“Are we _sure_ he’s not drunk?” Tobias asked, watching Jake skeptically. Jake had already gone back to sleep.

“They’re having opposing reactions to the drugs,” Erek said, removing his hand from Rachel’s wrist. “Where Rachel is hyper-alert, Jake is hyper-docile. Both have lowered inhibitions, but where Jake’s lowered inhibition means not caring, Rachel’s lowered inhibition means aggression.”

“I’ll show you aggression,” Rachel snapped.

“So basically she’s the mean drunk, and he’s the cuddly drunk,” Marco deciphered. “Anything we don’t know already?”

“Tom can talk,” Rachel said.

Everyone turned to her. Everyone but Jake, who was definitely asleep again. “What?” asked Tobias.

“He can talk,” she repeated. “He talked at us.”

“What did he say?” asked Erek.

“‘Ident’,” she told him.

Marco sighed in relief. “Yeah,” he said. “When I ran into him on that cruiser, during the war, he asked for my ident card. When I didn’t immediately comply, trying to talk to him instead, he threatened to kill me.”

“He must have been triggered after all,” said Cassie.

“Um, no,” Rachel said, hopping down off her exam table. “I told you, this was pre-meditated.”

“Right,” said Marco, “because he was programmed to pre-meditate it.”

“Listen here, slut-bucket!” Rachel started, advancing toward him, but Tobias grabbed her by the wrist to stop her. She immediately swung around to punch him, and he only barely dodged her fist.

Tobias grabbed the other wrist as well and glared at her. “Wow,” he snapped. “Just… _wow_. You are going to bed. Now.”

“You’re not the boss of me!” Rachel objected.

Cassie leaned in toward Erek. “Can you… um… give her something?” she asked. “Help her sleep this off?”

Erek shook his head. “Sorry, but I can’t risk an interaction until I know what they’ve been dosed with,” he said.

“Rachel, stop!” Tobias insisted as she thrashed in his arms.

Marco snapped his fingers. “Wait, I’ve got it,” he said, and he left Jake’s side and hurried out of the infirmary, to everyone’s confusion.

“Let me go!” Rachel insisted.

“Um, no,” Tobias growled. “Rachel stop it!”

“Um…” Cassie said uneasily. “Tobias, you need to…”

“Kinda busy,” Tobias grunted.

“But she’s－” Cassie was interrupted when Rachel elbowed Tobias hard in the gut. As he fell back, she turned and kicked him in the groin, the knee, and the chest in quick succession. “-- holding back,” Cassie finished.

Angrily, Rachel spun toward her. Luckily, that was the moment in which Marco chose to return with a wrench, which he used to hit her in the back of the head. She went down like a dropped brick.

For a moment, Cassie, Tobias, and Erek just stared down at her. Then, glaring, Erek demanded, “Really? Head trauma?”

Marco shrugged. “Well, it won’t have a drug interaction,” he said.


	2. Chapter 2

Two days later, Marco found Tobias where he usually was lately, when he wasn’t on the bridge, with his ass parked outside of his locked bedroom door, sporting nasty bruises and glaring at the floor. Marco frowned and asked, “Still hasn’t come down?”

Tobias shook his head slowly, blinking sleepily. “Erek’s still trying to figure out what they were dosed with,” he mumbled.

Marco watched him for a moment, then crouched in front of him. “You know this isn’t her, right?”

Tobias nodded but didn’t look convinced. “Like you said, she’s a mean drunk,” he mumbled.

Marco quirked an eyebrow at him. “I hear a ‘but’ in that sentence,” he said.

Tobias glanced aside and said, “But she has never hit _me_. And she’s been spittin’ mad at me before, too. But she never hit me. You’re right; it’s not her. Not at all.” He glanced up at Marco, and the look on his face wrenched at Marco’s cold, withered heart. “What am I supposed to do about that?”

Marco shrugged and stood. “Change the coordinates?” he suggested.

Tobias blinked up at him. “What?”

Marco shrugged again and explained, “We need to stop by Persephone.”

“Uh, we can’t just stop by Persephone,” Tobias said. “That is a wild swing out of our way, especially avoiding the Alliance, and we won’t have enough fuel cells to get to the job.”

“I’ll get your fuel cells,” Marco promised. “And your paycheck, too.”

“Why can’t we just get them in－?” And then Tobias realized what Marco had said. “This is where I stop asking questions, isn’t it?”

Marco grinned. “Actually, we passed that point after I said ‘we need to stop by Persephone,’ but you’re getting better!” he praised him. Tobias rolled his eyes and groaned as he moved to stand.

“Where, exactly, on Persephone am I parking?” Tobias asked as he moved toward the bridge.

“Wherever is opposite of Eavesdown,” Marco said, shrugging.

Tobias turned to look at him. “You’re going to Eavesdown by yourself?” he asked.

“You _really_ don’t get this ‘don’t ask questions’ thing, do you?” Marco mocked him playfully. “No, I just want this ship parked as far from where Chapman does her business as possible. I’ll be taking shuttle two to an undisclosed location.”

“Why shuttle two?” Tobias asked, and Marco gave him a pointed look. Tobias threw up his hands in defeat. “Okay, okay, I’m just trying to form a map. Do whatever you want.”

－ －

Cassie knocked on the door frame before entering the infirmary. Erek looked up from where he sat, exhausted, in a chair beside Jake’s bed. “Hey,” he said, quietly.

“How’s he doing?” asked Cassie.

Erek shook his head and looked at Jake mournfully. “I’m not sure you want to hear what I have to say,” he said.

“Then I definitely need to,” she said.

Erek glanced at her, then nodded. “Well, he’s getting worse, as you can tell. He hasn’t woken in ten hours, and, even then, he was barely responsive. He’s not depressed, and he’s not sick. He just… doesn’t care enough to do anything else.”

“Like when you don’t want to get out of the bed in the morning because it’s warm and comfy?” Cassie asked, and Erek nodded. “Have you been able to find a catalyst?” she asked.

Erek nodded. “Actually, the gas was the catalyst for a chemical already in his system, as I mentioned before. I still don’t know where it came from, but… come look.” He stood and ushered her over toward a screen. He tapped it a couple times and an image of two chemical compounds emerged. “This is the substance in Jake’s bloodstream. And _this_ is the substance in Tom’s bloodstream.”

Cassie raised an eyebrow. “You’re saying it’s the same thing?” she asked.

Erek shook his head. “No, there are slight differences,” he explained. “Tom slapped this together out of what was available. But there’s enough similarity to make me wonder…”

“Ident,” Cassie realized. She pushed him aside and tapped out several commands and a passcode, bringing up security footage from the attack. She’d already been over it once before, but she hadn’t thought she was seeing anything new. Now, she suspected otherwise.

On the screen, Tom was obviously struggling, barely choking out his word. Ident. Just “ident.” Nothing else. He looked scared. The sort of scared that comes with determined and foolish bravery. A Berenson scared.

“He wasn’t asking for their ident card!” she said, tapping the screen. “He was explaining! He wanted them to _identify_ , to understand what was happening to him!” She turned to hurry out, but Erek grabbed her arm. She spun back toward him, suddenly angry. “What did I tell you about touching me?” she demanded.

Erek quickly let go, putting his hands up. “Sorry!” he said. “I’m sorry! But there’s still something else I need to tell you,” he insisted.

She shook her head. “What?”

He gestured back to Jake. “The thing is… those chemicals in Tom’s bloodstream… they’re just latent traces. He… He obviously hasn’t been dosed in some time.”

Cassie looked to her boyfriend in horror. “You mean they could be this way… permanently?” she demanded, and Erek nodded. “Then we _have_ to make him speak.”

－ －

The helmet was not how Fox got their name. But it helped. There was never a question of identity, as there was with other disguises. You caught one glimpse, and you knew immediately who this was, even without ever meeting them before or even having believed that the stories were true. You saw that copper and bronze helmet and its artfully sculpted ear and nose points, and you knew you’d just lost something so valuable that you’d never be able to admit to anyone that you had, because Fox dealt in property that couldn’t be claimed on an insurance form or recovered by police.

Fox stole information.

Brass legs hissed and whirred quietly as the self-made mechanics adjusted for the activity of jumping off a roof and onto a local transport carrier. Fox stretched and replayed the action mentally for the thousandth time. Unfortunately, no plan could ever account for the infinite variability of _doing_.

But that was the fun part.

－ －

“How are you feeling?” Tobias asked, keeping a careful eye on Rachel as he crept down the ladder to their shared room.

She was lying in bed, staring up at the ceiling. The audio player that Marco had set up with meditation lessons lay on the floor, making broken noises. She didn’t move to face him as she spoke. “Still pissed,” she said in a very careful monotone. “About nothing. I search and I search, but I’ve got no good reason to be mad. I’m just full of anger and murder, and I don’t know how to turn it off.”

Tobias eased over to the bed and sat on the very edge of it, not daring to touch her. “Erek’s gonna figure this out for us,” he said. “He and Cassie think they’ve already made advances. This is just temporary.”

“Temporary,” she scoffed. “You sound like that fucking Buddhist shit he put in here. ‘This is just a temporary state of being.’”

“I thought Marco was Catholic,” Tobias said.

“I don’t think he’s really anything,” she muttered. She shook her head and closed her eyes. “I’m a danger to you,” she whispered.

Tobias shrugged and forced a smile. “When aren’t you?” And then, with a yelp, he jumped away as she lunged for him, the chain around her wrist just barely keeping her out of reach of him. “Sorry!” he said quickly as she strained to claw at him. “Sorry! No joking when you’re mad! I forgot! I… I am going to go back upstairs now.”

In the passenger quarters, Cassie and Erek were not having much more luck with their subject than Tobias was. They sat in the cabin-turned-cell where Tom was cuffed to a chair with his hands between his legs while Aximili watched over him. Of course, Marco had brought up the point that they were trusting their most dangerous passenger with their most mysterious passenger, but they’d had little choice in the matter. He was already working with Fox at some unknown location on Persephone, and Tobias, Cassie, and Erek had their hands full with Rachel and Jake.

Despite being certain that Tom had acted with at least somewhat good intentions, Cassie could not get Tom to speak. She barely got him to look at her. She’d been trying for two days, and Jake and Rachel were running out of time. Jake’s vitals were slowing down dangerously while Rachel’s were speeding up.

“Tom, please,” Cassie begged. “There must be something that you understand. To do this… You must have understood your situation.”

Tom stared at her blankly.

Erek re-entered the room, holding two vials. He held them up in front of Tom. “You don’t understand us speaking to you, but you must be able to read certain words to have chosen these,” he said, and Tom did, in fact, lean forward to squint at the labels. “You smashed these together,” Erek said, and he motioned to Tom, then clinked the vials together, mimicking the action of smashing them.

To everyone’s surprise, Tom looked up at Erek and nodded.

“Is that… communication?” Aximili asked.

“God, I hope so,” said Cassie.

Erek took a deep breath and continued. “Okay,” he said, putting the vials away in a pocket. “Okay, well, when you did that…” He pulled out a panel from a different pocket and turned it to face Tom. On it was displayed the security feeds from the infirmary and Rachel and Tobias’s room. “You did this.”

“Um…” Aximili started, but Cassie shushed him.

“Tom, please,” she begged, and Tom turned to her curiously. “Tell me you understand what’s happened.” She pointed to the panel. “Tell me you know what caused this.” When he only continued to stare at her, she tried to think of a hand signal. She spread her hands and arched her eyebrows in what she hoped was a questioning gesture. She pointed at him, then at the screen again.

Tom’s gaze slid aside from her as he thought over her signals, then he leaned in toward her and mimicked a bite.

“I have no idea what that means,” Cassie said.

“Perhaps it would be more helpful to show him _both_ results of his actions?” asked Aximili. “Both Captain Jake and Rachel?”

“What? I am.” Erek turned the panel back toward himself only to find that what he’d actually shown was the infirmary, with Jake’s sleeping form, and Rachel and Tobias’s room, with Tobias unconscious on the floor and Rachel nowhere to be seen. “Oh shit.”

And that was when the power went out.

－ －

Fox calmly stepped over the now unconscious form of Atherton Wing and made their way to Wing’s dedicated source box. They touched the screen and quickly typed in a few basic commands.

“Come on,” Fox mumbled. “People like you have to have a good secret or two…” The first place checked was the financial records which was where one usually found bribes and extortion and tax evasion and blood money and illicit dealings. All Fox found, however, were a few choice investments in _the_ corporation of the Verse.

Moving on to other files, however, just seemed to reveal more investment information. “Is this really your _personal_ source box?” Fox groused, idly flipping through a few files.

And then

Fox stopped cold.

“ _What?_ ”

－ －

Cassie cried out as she was thrown against the wall. Ax pulled her aside, barely missing Rachel’s punch.

Rachel’s fist thumped against the wall, and she cried out in fury, turning to them to continue her assault. Which was when Tom threw a chair at her head. Not just any chair. The one that he had been cuffed to.

“We are so bad at security,” Cassie whimpered.

Raging, Rachel picked up the chair and shoved it at him, hard. But he merely pulled it out of her hands and tossed it aside. Rachel pulled a knife, but he grabbed her wrist. She headbutted him and finally won the advantage, quickly following with a kick to the chest that knocked him on his ass.

She flung herself on top of him and began to assail him with her fists, but he rolled out from under her, with some struggle, backhanding her to gain a moment’s reprieve. Roaring, she reached out and grabbed his ankle, pulling him roughly back toward her.

Fortunately, they were both stopped when Fox electrocuted them. Fox turned to Cassie and Aximili, still crouching nearby. “Where is Erek?” Fox demanded in their strange, distorted voice.

“Uh…” said Cassie.

Marco tore off the helmet. “Sorry, I didn’t have time to change my legs back,” he said, snarling a little in his impatience. “But I figured our time was finite.”

“He’s with Captain Jake in the infirmary,” Aximili reported, pointing to the nearby room, though he was openly gawking at Marco. “Rachel tried to kill him.”

Marco tossed the helmet aside and strode into the infirmary on powerful, copper- and brass-colored, artistically vulpine-styled legs. He found Erek bandaging Jake’s chest. He swallowed the bile rising in his throat and forced himself to speak. “King, if you knew what chemical the catalyst activated, could you cure them?” he demanded.

Erek blinked at him in surprise. “I…”

“Yes or no. Could. You. Cure. Them?” Marco snarled as Cassie and Aximili hurried into the infirmary after him.

Erek nodded frantically. “Yes, but… I mean how could we－?”

“It’s in the food,” Marco said.

Erek stared at him, blinking. “What?” asked Cassie.

Marco turned to her, struggling to keep his composure in spite of the storm of emotions brewing in his chest. “It’s in the food,” he repeated. “It’s in the medicine. It’s in the cosmetics. It’s in the gorram toothpaste. It’s in all of us. Jake and Rachel weren’t targeted, they were just the only ones exposed to the catalyst. It’s in the food. It’s in everything that Blue Sun has ever touched.”


	3. Chapter 3

Slowly, Jake blinked awake to the bright lights of the infirmary. He looked around and found Marco seated next to him, half asleep, scowling and clutching his hand. “Awe, are you breaking countenance for me?” Jake teased.

Marco jumped out of his seat. “Jake! You’re awake!” he cried, immediately pulling Jake into an emphatic kiss.

Gently, Jake pushed him off. “Not that I’m not happy to be kissed first thing in the morning, but I feel incredibly hungover and don’t want to vomit on you,” he said.

Marco nodded, though Jake wasn’t sure he was actually listening, and leaned over Jake to press the intercom button. “Cassie, he’s awake,” he said. “Get down here.”

“I have been shot and had less fuss,” Jake complained. He laid back down on the bed, rubbing his temples with his palms. “Why do I feel like I’ve drank Rachel’s entire stash?”

“You’re dehydrated because we had to take out the IV,” Marco explained. “As soon as you’re able, we’ll have you on purified water and the rabbits Ax hunted up for us.”

Jake just blinked at him. “What?”

“Jake!” Cassie exclaimed, running into the infirmary and pulling him into a tight hug. This was immediately followed by kissing him all over his face.

“Please don’t take this personally, but all that movement is not helping the nausea,” Jake moaned.

“Oh!” Cassie cried, pulling back. “Sorry!” She gently eased him back on the bed.

“I’ll get him some food,” Marco told them, moving out of Jake’s line of sight. He heard the door open and close as Marco left.

Jake groaned and rubbed his temples again. “Can you please explain to me why we are wasting time hunting rabbits instead of doing our job?” he demanded.

Cassie wriggled nervously. “Actually, we had to cancel that job. Marco told them that we had a passenger come down with red plague and Alliance forced us into a quarantine, so we were forgiven,” she said. “He figures we’ll be laying low for a while anyway, so no one will know the wiser.”

Jake attempted to sit up again, then immediately regretted it and fell back against the bed with a thump. “Cassie, we don’t do that job, we can’t fly,” he said.

“Oh, Marco took care of that, too,” she said. “Did you know that he’s Fox? I mean, he said you did, but Marco lies.”

Jake nodded weakly. “Yeah, it started as a nickname in the war, on account of him being a sneaky bastard. Even after he joined us officially, he was still able to snatch intel from Alliance officers,” he explained. “Afterward, he anonymously commissioned the helmet and legs and made a myth of Fox, targeting people he’s never personally known, often from the Guild’s blacklist, so that he would be unlikely to be caught and unlikely to be fired if he was. It actually covers his tracks from the war, getting those jobs retroactively attributed to Fox through hearsay and whatnot.”

Cassie nodded. “Yeah, that’s basically what he said,” she told him. “Anyway, he went after this guy on Persephone, hoping to find something he could sell, and I guess he did because he completely restocked our fuel and paid Tobias and me our overdue wages _and_ our wages for next month.”

Jake blinked at her in surprise. “That is _way_ more than I asked him for.”

Cassie nodded, then glanced over her shoulder to make sure Marco wasn’t back yet. “I think he’s scared,” she admitted.

Jake frowned. “Scared?” he repeated.

She nodded again, looking down at her hands. “Jake, he… He found something else. That’s how we were able to cure you and Rachel. He found, um, investor reports. From Blue Sun. Jake, they’ve been drugging… everything. Anyone who’s ever bought Blue Sun’s food or medicine or whatever has been poisoned. Tom didn’t drug you, he just activated it. And… And people know. The investors know. The government knows. They’re doing it on purpose.”

Jake stared at her, breathing raggedly from barely restrained anger. “Where is Rachel?” he demanded through his teeth.

“With Tobias,” Cassie assured him. “She’s okay. We’re going to be okay.”

Jake shook his head. “Nothing’s ever going to be okay again,” he said.

Down in their shared room, Rachel was expressing the same sentiment with less words. She curled against Tobias’s chest, his arms wrapped around her, and she cried into his shirt. She cried all the things she couldn’t say. For what she’d done to him. For what had been done to her. For the memories that would never leave.

For the way the power of it had made her feel.

The passenger cabins had their own troubles. In his room, Erek was trying to reason with his family. “Sir, they are being drugged,” he explained. “They need fresh food.”

“Just them?” asked the man playing the part of his father in this life.

Erek shook his head. “No,” he admitted. “It’s in the system. It’s everywhere. Test the food. The medicine. You’ll see.”

“Friend, you understand that we cannot feed every person in the Verse?”

“I’m not asking you to.”

“Then what is the point?” Mr. King asked. “We are not meant to interfere in wars. As horrifying as this is, inserting ourselves could risk exposure. Knowing our technology will only make matters worse as the attempt and, possibly, succeed in duplicating it for nefarious purposes.”

“But we won’t be inserting ourselves,” Erek insisted. “We’ll be inserting them. They know. They come closer and closer every day to discovering the truth in Thomas Berenson. If we can just see them through, help them survive… We may, through them, help the entire human race.”

“Through war. Uprising. Death and destruction.”

“Is it better to let terror rule?”

Mr. King considered that, then asked, “Are you so certain that what might take its place will be better?”

“I cannot guarantee it,” Erek admitted. “But… I believe it is worth trying.”

Mr. King nodded, but he was not yet convinced. “You say that they are discovering the truth of Thomas Berenson, but, in fact, it is you who is discovering it for them. Can you yet say what this truth is? And can you say that this will not lead eyes to you, when all is exposed?”

“To the first question, no I cannot,” said Erek. “I have not seen this sort of cognitive manipulation before. But I believe that, in his way, Tom is trying to help us understand. We are not yet at a standstill. As for the other issue, it is possible that I will soon be relinquishing my lead to another. I believe Aximili-Esgarrouth-Isthill knows more than he is saying. If he can be trusted, I think he may reveal much.”

Mr. King frowned. “This name is not human.”

“No,” said Erek. “Which is one of the primary reasons that I believe him to be concealing something.”

“The linguistic pattern is also not known to us,” Mr. King pointed out. “We have no data on who he is, what he is or where he came from.”

“The compounds in the food are also not known to any of our databases,” Erek pointed out. “This similarity in situation cannot be overlooked, and I find myself wondering… What if what he came here for was not his brother? Or not only. What if one or the other of them was searching for something else? Something outside our outdated database.”

At that time, Aximili was proving Erek’s theory not-incorrect. He eased open the door to Tom’s room, made sure the beast appeared relatively secure, then entered, sliding the door closed behind him and locking it. He watched Tom watch him. Chained again to a chair, this time with hands behind the back and much heavier chains and sturdier locks. Somehow, he suspected this was not actually an improvement, but it might at least slow Tom down, should an attack occur.

“Do you recognize me?” Aximili asked.

Tom simply continued to watch him in silence.

“Do you understand me?” he asked.

More silence.

“Kedali mon trasa pellor?” he tried.

Tom tilted his head, appearing interested, but he remained silent.

Aximili pulled a panel out of his pocket and touched the surface. “I have here the reports of Mr. King’s examinations of you,” he explained. “He has been quite thorough.” He tapped the surface again. “In fact, though he dismissed it, thinking the damage similar to your brother’s, he found physical trauma within your ear.”

Aximili turned the panel to Tom to reveal the microcam image. Tom’s lip curled, but he studied the image closely. “But this is not a auditory deafening, is it?” Aximili asked. “This is an insertion. Your eardrum was penetrated. Repeatedly. I’m going to guess every three days? Soon, it stopped attempting to heal entirely and simply scarred in its destroyed state.”

Aximili tucked the panel away, bringing Tom’s eyes back to his. “You’ve been here two weeks now, thoroughly observable most of the time, unable to escape this place where there is no Kandrona. So I know that you are no longer infested.”

Aximili stepped toward Tom, and Tom stiffened, shoving his back rigid against the chair and glaring up at Aximili. “I am the only one in this place that will believe you,” Aximili said. “So, if you can at all understand my words, I implore you to think about that. You have an ally in me.”

Slowly, Tom’s lips peeled back into a vicious snarl, a low, long, unnatural growl burbling up from the very pit of him. Unfazed by the display, Aximili turned and left the room once more.


End file.
